Reviewed by Nadia Free­man

Photo cred­it: Philip Merry

Jac­ob Dom­broski is all heart in his per­form­ance of Big J A New Leg­acy. It is clear that he relives the feel­ings of every story he shares. This vul­ner­ab­il­ity is most evid­ent dur­ing his dance pieces. From krump to grace­ful, emotive sec­tions, his actions are delib­er­ate. He can switch from raw power and frus­tra­tion to smooth and eleg­ant move­ment that, com­bined with a per­fect syn­ergy of visu­als, light­ing and song selec­tion, pull the audi­ence into the shift­ing moods of the show.

The piece is a scrap­book of vignette’s from Jacob’s life that gives the audi­ence insight into Jacob’s exper­i­ence of the world, from the love of fam­ily to dis­crim­in­a­tion and pre­ju­dice and the excite­ment of new oppor­tun­it­ies. Jac­ob rep­res­ents the unheard voice of many, and attend­ing this show is a remind­er of what the empower­ing abil­ity of the arts can be for minor­it­ies.

It felt like Jac­ob was bring­ing us all in to feel like one of the fam­ily with the nar­ra­tion start­ing with home videos of Jac­ob as a child. Framed with the incred­ible set design of a hov­er­ing tele­vi­sion screen and Jacob’s back to the audi­ence as though we are all watch­ing the home movies togeth­er.   This won­der­ful meth­od of con­nect­ing us, the audi­ence, to the storytelling is main­tained through­out the show in con­ver­sa­tion and to the final song at the end. 

Cred­it must be giv­en to the pro­duc­tion team for their com­bined efforts in deliv­er­ing an excel­lent piece of theatre. I look for­ward to future works from Jac­ob and Every­body Cool Lives Here.